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Meet the Mushrooms That Could Build a House

Bay Area based artist-inventor and amateur mycologist Phil Ross has an international patent pending on a method of producing fungus as a sustainable construction material. It may be surprising to hear that a biodegradable, durable, and non-toxic building material is on sale in the vegetable aisle at the supermarket. However, it’s not the tasty caps that Ross is after, but the root-like fibers of mushrooms form an enormous underground tangle called mycelium. Dried mycelium forms a lightweight mold and water resistant fire-proof material that is an effective insulator. It is also very sturdy stuff. Bob Engels of Gourmet Mushrooms notes, “Hardened steel blades on equipment at our farm need regular attention following their encounters with these massed threads of hyphae.”

Ross reported that multiple saw blades and metal files were destroyed while shaping the five hundred mycelium bricks he grew into an archway. The archway was a 6×6 foot sculpture titled Mycotectural Alpha, and was likely the first man-made structure made entirely out of mushrooms. Others have taken notice of the potential of fungus—a new start-up called Evocative Design producing mycelium alternatives to styrofoam and insulation material has received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Agriculture.

Ross’s “biotechnical” artwork encompasses drawings, paintings, sculptures, prototypes, and extensive materials research. Over the past 15 years he has been experimenting with fungus, growing and shaping mushrooms in sterile laboratory-like environments, even learning to make his own air filters to provide the necessary clean air. He says mycelium bricks can be grown in about a week from a mixture poured into a mold, but the more organic-looking mushroom sculptures that are created by adding or subtracting gas or air from their growing environment can take years to create. the artist explains how the “myotecture” bricks are made:

Why creating life-saving drugs is a lousy bet

In a bitter paradox, antibiotics fuelled the growth of the twentieth century’s most profitable pharmaceutical companies, and are one of society’s most desperately needed classes of drug. Yet the market for them is broken. For almost two decades, the large corporations that once dominated antibiotic discovery have been fleeing the business, saying that the prices they can charge for these life-saving medicines are too low to support the cost of developing them. Most of the companies now working on antibiotics are small biotechnology firms, many of them running on credit, and many are failing.


Paratek Pharmaceuticals successfully brought a new antibiotic to the market. So why is the company’s long-term survival in question?

A Wood Product Stronger than Steel that Could Change the World

Circa 2018


Measuring one million times less than the width of a human hair, graphene is harder than diamonds and 200 times stronger than steel. Small, strong, and flexible, it is the most conductive material on earth and has the potential to charge a cell phone in just five seconds or to upload a terabit of data in one. It can be used to filter salt from water, develop bullet-stopping body armor, and create biomicrorobots.

These incredible properties have captured the attention of scientists and industry specialists around the world, all seeking to harness graphene’s potential for applications in electronics, energy, composites and coatings, biomedicine, and other industries.

Derived from graphite, the same graphite used in pencils and many other common use products, graphene is, ironically, one of the most expensive materials on the planet. This is because the process of chemically peeling off, or exfoliating, a single layer of graphene from graphite ore is cost-prohibitive on an industrial scale.

Study finds cancer-boosting culprit that multiplies with age

“Observations of metastasising cells revealed something intriguing—a high level of something called methylmalonic acid (MMA), a metabolic byproduct that appears to accumulate as we get older.”

“So how does MMA induce these changes in cancer cells? The key seems to be in a sort of reprogramming that “switches on” a gene called SOX4.

Prior research has shown SOX4 encourages cancer cells to become more aggressive and prone to metastasis.

To test whether it was indeed SOX4 that was altering the qualities of the cancer cells, the team blocked expression of the gene, and found that MMA no longer appeared to have the same effect.

Blocking SOX4 also stopped the process by which the cancer cells were able to resist two cancer treatments.”


As our bodies convert food into energy, they produce debris that accumulates as we age. New research shows that one of these metabolic throwaways plays a potentially deadly role in the development of cancer.

Researchers examine the role of muscle strength in aging cognitive health

Research is showing a strong link between handgrip strength, walking speed, and cognition, indicating how improved physical health could boost elderly minds.

Based at Barwon Health, in the heart of Geelong’s clinical precinct, researchers are working to identify the —such as changes in , muscle strength and physical performance—for developing sarcopenia (loss of muscle mass, strength and function with advancing age) across the lifespan.

This testing involves the Geelong Osteoporosis Study (GOS) which began in the early 1990s, gathering adult participants from the electoral roll in the Barwon Statistical Division. During recent follow-up testing, researchers also measured cognitive function through a computer-based program, in tandem with evaluations.

Study finds clues to aging in ‘junk’ DNA

For decades, greater than 60% of the human genome was believed to be “junk DNA” that served little or no purpose in the course of human development. Recent research by Colorado State University is challenging this notion to show that junk DNA might be important after all.

A new study, published on June 5 in Aging Cell, found that a portion of noncoding genetic material, called repetitive element transcripts, might be an important biomarker of the aging process.

Tom LaRocca, an assistant professor in the Department of Health and Exercise Science and faculty member in the Columbine Heath Systems Center for Healthy Aging at CSU, led the study to investigate a growing body of evidence that repetitive elements—transposons and other sequences that occur in multiple copies in the —may become active over time as we age.